St. Petersburg decides to replace scarce drugs with generic from Bangladesh, China, India
The authorities of St. Petersburg have decided to replace the scarce drugs with generics.
St. Petersburg drug suppliers are looking for new manufacturers in China, India and Bangladesh, Chairman of the St. Petersburg Health Committee Dmitry Lisovets said at a press conference.
According to him, the city will purchase original drugs that have nothing to replace for beneficiaries at the prices that the supplier will offer. The remaining drugs will be replaced with generics.
“We will already be guided, based on the fact, firstly, that the market of medicines is not confined only to those countries that have chosen such unfriendly actions against the Russian Federation. Our suppliers are currently searching for manufacturers in the countries of Southeast Asia. And it is there – in India, Bangladesh, China – that the producers of substances are mainly concentrated,” the official said.
“Naturally, we understand that those medicines that have generic forms, naturally, we will use generic forms as well, in order to provide all residents who are entitled to preferential provision with all medicines within the allocated budget,” Lisovets added.
The chief freelance specialist in diabetology of the Health Committee Irina Karpova admitted that patients are not always ready to take generics. So, the deficiency of insulin glargine (“Lantus”), which, according to her, has been observed for the last two years, is due to the fact that patients refuse substitutes.
“But the problems are not related to its lack, and I would call 90% of these problems psychological. Because when generic drugs appeared – these are substitute drugs – many patients were tuned to the original drug, which has the trade name “Lantus”, and spent a lot of energy to get this drug,” Karpova said.
At the same time, she assured that such a generic as “RinGlar” in practice showed “high efficiency and substitutability”.
On March 23, Lisovets recognized a shortage in pharmacies of 34 types of medicines, 32 of which belong to the list of vital and important medicines. According to him, in most cases, supply disruptions occurred due to violations in logistics.
March 24. INTERFAX.RU